A Welsh steelworker expressed concern today that the Daily Mail appeared more interested in the forthcoming Top Gear series than in the plight of 40,000 steelworkers, their families, and the countless ancillary dependents of the British steel industry.

“It’s a bloody disgrace,” said Clive Waller. “I mean, I can understand the outpourings of grief over the passing of a national treasure like Ronnie Corbett – God love him – but when there’s thousands of families whose lives are being turned upside down and inside out you’d think the national press would have more immediate concerns than bloody Top Gear.

“It just demonstrates how highly the working man is regarded by those with a ‘for profit’ propaganda machine at their disposal. What’s really annoying is that they sacrificed our industrial base in favour of banking and the service industry and when it all goes tits up they bail out the bankers but they don’t want to know when we’re in trouble. And it’s all because they have this fanatical power trip agenda.

“What they don’t seem to realise is that if they kill us off they really won’t have a fall-back position because there’ll be bugger all left to fall back on. It’s fantasy politics. Still, as long as Top Gear’s in good shape it’s all good. I suppose…until you factor into the equation that they hate the BBC too.

“Let ’em carry on. There’ll only be them left after they’ve killed every other bugger off.

The following list shows the value to society in economic terms of different jobs and professions. There are those jobs that create value and those that expend value. The list is divided into 13 groups. 1-7 being those that are a financial plus to society and 8-13 which are a financial drain.

As a guide, if we take a miner from group 3; At the start of his day he has a produce value of zero, but at the end of his shift he will, by his labours have produced material which is of a higher value than it was when it was still stuck in the ground. By doing his job he has generated value of which a percentage will be taken from him in tax to support the prison worker who is funded totally by the taxes of the state (or part of the value that the miner has generated). And while prison workers are necessary, the money spent on them compared to the money that would be lost if they didn’t exist means that they are in effect a drain on society in financial terms. Thus the higher the group the more financial value those within it have to society.

As another example it could be argued that a teacher has more value than a prostitute, but as teachers are funded from taxes and a prostitute is paid by his or her clients the prostitute is actually of more financial use to society. However a teacher by their labours produces more efficient ‘value generators’ for the future and so their efforts rate them higher than a police officer whose value is limited to a partial prevention of theft from other members of society or a casino worker who by the very nature of the business is working in a parasitic field whereby the customers must overall lose money.

You may be surprised just how valuable (or not) your work is.

Class 1
Those that produce something by their labour without reducing the world’s resources